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Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Saluting Moonbase Central!

I am sure some of FATE SF's readers know about Bill Bulloch and Paul Woods' excellent space toy blog Moonbase Central.As as a celebration of the blog's fourth anniversary, Woodsy sent me a custom-made Project Sword Moonbase Supply Pack with a Sword Astronaut, a Recovery Chute, and a Thor Rocket! It arrived Monday in a well-packed box with a bookmark-sized personalized note and two illustrations by Woodsy.

The Thor Rocket is quite impressive. I asked Bill Bulloch for permission to use a couple of his photos of the Thor Rocket from posts on Moonbase Central. Below, you can see one of the Thor Rockets equipped with a 50 megaton missile launching from the lunar surface to intercept an incoming meteoroid.

As a way of saying thank you, as well as celebrating the Moonbase Central blog's fourth anniversary, I thought I'd stat up one of these babies for Starblazer Adventures. So here goes!

I chose to stat-up the Thor Rocket as a vehicle, rather than a weapon, so you have the option of using them in space battles against large objects like a meteoroid. Here's an example of the Damocles Asteroid, which was destroyedpulverized obliterated by three Thor Rockets before it struck Moonbase Central:

The mechanics that follow are my own interpretation of the toy, informed a bit by the story told in pictures and text in the Moonbase Central blog. Enjoy using these at home (with adequate lead shielding), and be sure to check out the Moonbase Central blog. If your childhood was in the 60s and 70s, then you will probably see some things that bring back good memories!

NOTES: My guess is that you could also retrofit a Thor Rocket with a 1-2 person crew compartment rather than a warhead. This would be a tight fit, but it could work as a evacuation, courier, or one way rescue vehicle (such as to deliver a new pilot or crisis engineer to another spacecraft that is in trouble somewhere between Earth and the Moon). In that case, you'll need to:

2 comments:

Thanks for the thumbs up John. Moonbase Central is always open to more cosmic visitors, Sci Fiers, gamers and modellers. I love the stesses and scales you've done for the THOR Rocket! Very cool. Bill and me have just done the same for the Project SWORD Fleet in our new set of Fleet Codex Cards. Great site and I've joined the squadren. It was Fate!

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Last and First Men

"In your day you have learnt to calculate something of the magnitudes of space and time. But to grasp my theme in its true proportions, it is necessary to do more than calculate. It is necessary to brood upon these magnitudes, to draw out the mind toward them, to feel the littleness of your here and now, and of the moment of civilization you call history." - Olaf Stapledon